Alcoholic Wife. The breaking point.

When my wife and I went to premarital counseling before the rabbi would agree to marry us, he told is how, when he had counseled people going though divorce, so many people feel they were failures because they were divorcing.

Instead, he told them to look at their marriage as of they had succeeded for the amount of years that they were married. If they were divorcing after, say, five years, they should look at it as if they had a successful five-year marriage.

You had positive experiences with your wife. You've had children with your wife. Look at those experiences as successful ones, not failures.

Good luck. Brighter days are ahead.

 

Can't offer any advice or relate usefully, but ... may peace be with you and yours, or at least on the way, whenever and however it presents itself.

 

This is a nice message in this context, but why would he tell you that in premarital counseling?

 

It's been a long time ago, so I'm trying to remember most of it. It was part of his message, in which the rabbi said the key to staying married was to make sure you were working to make your spouse happy. If you stopped trying to make them happy, that was when problems would arise. If your marriage lasted only a certain length of time, those were days that you and her were working to make each other happy. You shouldn't think of yourself as a failure if you kept working to make your spouse happy.

 

Ex, sorry about this. You're in for a very tough, stressful few months. You're probably two years out from feeling totally absolved, but only six months out from feeling much, much better about everything. Just know that you will feel better—I suspect you will feel as though a massive weight has been lifted from you and from your children. It will just take time. In your lowest moments, please remember that, okay? It's like surviving a hurricane. You just have to hold on until the storm passes. It passes. Hang in there.

 

UPDATE:

She served me with divorce papers, just a half hour ago here at work. Between newscasts, no less. What a gem. This couldn't even wait until I was done for the day. She (or someone) left them with the receptionist, who then discreetly handed me an enclosed envelope.

It's chilling that it actually happened. I'm a little nervous about the finality of this but, overall, I actually feel relieved.

She got absolutely blitzed last night -- 2 1/2 bottles of wine and was picking fights over anything and everything. I got a whopping 2 hours of sleep before coming into work today dealing with her.

Thank you to everyone here who has offered to help. Bumpy days are ahead but I already feel a little better.

 

I saw this the other day and it spoke to me: "This too shall pass. It may pass like a kidney stone but it will pass". Best to you and your kids and I hope your soon to be ex can find the peace I did.

 

I'm sorry to hear of it. If nothing else, at least you can say you tried your best and it just didn't work out. Good luck.

 

You may be able to look back and have sympathy for her and regret for how things turned out someday. But for now you need to lock those feelings up in the attic. You are in a business negotiation now, and with an untrustworthy party. Time to select your lawyer if you haven't already and drop Thor's hammer. She has no business being around your kids while she's drinking, and the drinking is going to increase now that she's filed.

No quarter.

 

My friend, what happened today was going to happen; it was just a matter of marking the occurence. You can get past it now, and you and your kids can have a healthier existence.

 

Thanks all.

Three weeks ago, I got myself "loaded for bear" for this day. The good part of being a reporter in this town is that I know an armada of lawyers from interviews and stories I've work on. One guy is doing this "at cost" for me and he's pretty solid. My documentation is in place of her incidents so, as he said, we're good for a stronger foothold on custody.

He is pretty shocked that she dropped off the papers the day after a horrific bender. His line, "that's like Sean Miller asking for a raise today."

Seeing the actual paperwork brought out a weird emotion. I wasn't angry or sad. It was almost like, oddly, getting an anticipated college acceptance letter to a reach school. Either way, they'd both cost me the same amount of money in the end. (rimshot)

 

She handed you a clear path out of this whole mess.

That's the best possible outcome for you and your kids in the long run, IMO.